Blame America First

Frank Wisner speaks the obvious. But, it goes counter to what POTUS and Hillary are saying. It goes against reported public sentiment on the streets in Cairo. It goes against what most pundits in our media are saying - that Mubarak must go, YESTERDAY!

The ‘blame America first’ crowd has staged a significant comeback. There’s fresh wind in their sails. Throughout major media reporting, the narrative developing is that we are singularly responsible for maintaining Mubarak - a tyrannical dictator - for so many years; that we (America) have been in support of nasty tyrants all over the world who make their populations suffer; blah, blah, blah… It even cropped up on this mornings ‘Religion On The Line’ radio program and remained basically unchallenged.

We seem to feel totally comfortable with the notion of blaming ourselves for all that’s wrong everywhere. How narcissistic we are, believing that the whole world turns only around us! If we can take credit for every evil, it’s still about us - isn‘t it? And that’s the point: I, me, mine - us - America. We may be the ‘Great Satan’, but we’re still ‘great’ and that’s all that counts.

Besides, Barack Hussein Obama has promised to single-handedly turn us away from the dark side and into the light. That’s why we elected him.

Before the 2008 election VP Biden said at a fundraiser: “Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama… Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis - a generated crisis - to test the mettle of this guy (Obama)… And he’s gonna need you… to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially… that we’re right.”

Well, it took longer than six months (unless you want to count the post-election protests in Iran), but let's not quibble. And ever since, in my own humble estimation, we’ve been holding back or doing the wrong thing entirely. Biden warned us of that back when. He essentially said, “Trust us. We know what we’re doing.”

Well, the jury is still out on that. Not sure if the White House is as confused as we are about what’s happening in Egypt. At the end of the day, confusion is only a temporary smoke screen. It might well be that all will be revealed in due time. As one left-wing clairvoyant so aptly put it, "We have to pass our bill so that you can find out what is in it". Nice string of alliterations, but otherwise quite perplexing. Looks like, as in everything else Obama has tried, chaos is the goal.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Irish Potato Famine

“…widespread opinion among the Cairo elite that the US aided the foment”

I’d go easy on that one. If proven, it could be blockbuster. It’s like the birth certificate fracas. (Quite possibly a trap.) But, as of now, there’s nothing much there (but the obvious). I’m sure Aaron Klein will be giving us the latest on his Sunday show.

It’s funny, though, that none of us would be so reckless as to bet the farm either for or against. We should know by now that Obama dislikes Israel intensely. He also dislikes the old guard that has brought us to this point. I can’t see him sitting around with Mubarak and chewing the fat for old time’s sake. It’s born of an inferiority complex stemming from not being facile with the facts. He knows that Mubarak would immediately size him up as a lightweight. Obama would feel much more comfortable sitting down with the likes of Ahmadinejad who’s a crazy as he is.

As for JB’s contention that Egyptian Muslims share nothing in common with Iranians, I beg to differ. As I’ve said before, the one issue that cements the Ummah into one cohesive unit is its hatred of Israel. This trumps any and all differences they might have among themselves. They stand united in their desire to rid their shores of the Jewish State. Whosoever achieves it will go down in the annals of Islamic history as no less than divine. Not only is it a big issue for them; it’s the only issue.

We ourselves went through the same thing here in America. The Democrats succeeded in cobbling together a coalition of splinter groups into a powerful force to unseat Republicans during Bush’s terms. These groups may not have agreed on every issue; but, on Bush and Republicans, they stood as one. They were successful. Their differences would emerge to haunt them later.

So too, it is in the Middle East. The various factions will unite against Israel (and its supporters). Even those who remain silent regarding this issue remain at risk.

We may very well witness the coalition breaking up under traditional stresses after the dirty deed is done. But this would amount to no more than being of curatorial interest as we spend the next century re-creating the Irish potato famine.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/